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Measuring perpetration of intimate partner violence: A systematic review

Understanding how common intimate partner violence (IPV) is in different groups and settings can inform better policies and interventions to prevent IPV and reduce its impact on public health. Much of the existing research on IPV has measured IPV victimisation in populations. But IPV reported by victims, e.g. in nationally representative crime or health surveys, reflects the behaviour of perpetrators. Asking people in surveys about their perpetration of IPV, and how frequently harmful behaviour(such as physical, sexual, or psychological harm) occur, is also important.

A new systematic review by VISION collaborator Vishal Bhavsar and VISION co-investigator Sian Oram gathers evidence on how IPV perpetration is measured in health surveys of the general population and presents a set of measurement principles. Based on 39 published articles, they find 27 health surveys containing information on IPV perpetration. These measures vary in detail, ranging from one or two binary items to more comprehensive scales. In many cases, the more detailed measures are adaptations of victimisation items reframed to capture perpetration, while a smaller number of studies use instruments specifically developed for IPV perpetration. Information relevant to understanding the public health implications of IPV perpetration, such as the sex and number of victims per perpetrator, the nature of relationships (e.g. marital, cohabiting), patterns of frequency or escalation, and harmful impact on victims, is not consistently collected. Details on the development and validation of measurement items are also often lacking.

Distinguishing IPV perpetrators from victims in measurement is important for the development of interventions, particularly where policies or programmes are designed to engage individuals who perpetrate IPV. Although health surveys do include some measures of perpetration, the extent and detail of these measures are limited. Some of the principles developed and applied in the review might also apply to the measurement of IPV perpetration and other forms of domestic abuse in electronic health records or policing data. A future cross-sector consensus on how to measure IPV perpetration might be helpful in informing the societal response to preventing IPV.

To download the paper: The Measurement of Perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence in General Population Health Surveys: Systematic Review

To cite: Bhavsar, V., Oram, S. The Measurement of Perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence in General Population Health Surveys: Systematic Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. OnlineFirst, March 31, 2026.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-026-00272-2

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Computational text analysis on unstructured police data: A scoping review

 

Police reports made following attendance at events such as crashes, domestic violence and theft often contain rich contextual details including indicators of mental health issues or abuse types, and persons/entities involved and their relationships, which are not typically captured in structured administrative data, interviews or official statistics. However, the sheer volume of information along with strict data access protocols render manual analysis impractical. Computational text analysis methods offer a feasible and effective approach to automatically process this underutilized data source.

The research team led by Dr Wilson Lukmanjaya (University of New South Wales) included VISION Research Fellow Dr Darren Cook. The team conducted an overview of studies using computational text analysis (e.g., text mining, natural language processing (NLP)), on unstructured police data, serving as a guide for researchers interested in employing similar methodologies. 

Their article, Computational text analysis on unstructured police data: A scoping review, was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA-SCR guidelines, following the two screening processes (title/abstract and full text screening) and the development of a pre-defined protocol. A search was conducted across seven electronic databases covering the past 20 years.

After removing duplicate entries and screening titles/abstracts and full-text publications, 61 studies met the inclusion criteria. Included studies were published between 2004 and 2024, with most from the United States, Australia and the Netherlands.

The scoping review indicates applications of computational text analysis on unstructured police data have moderate to high performance. Common limitations included variable data quality, with reliability depending on the level of detail provided by the police report’s author, and failure to report ethical implications or methodological limitations.

Computational text analysis can extract key information from unstructured police data. However, future research should clearly report ethics approvals and implications, and methodological limitations. 

Recommendation

  1. Establishing a structured data-sharing framework between law enforcement and researchers is crucial to facilitate access and support high quality, impactful research in this field.

To download the paper: Computational text analysis on unstructured police data: A scoping review

To cite: Lukmanjaya, W., Halmich, C., Butler, T., Cook, D., Karystianis, G. Computational text analysis on unstructured police data: a scoping review. Crime Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-026-00272-2

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Definitions of non-intimate partner and family-related femicide/feminicide

Significant public and media attention often follow the killing of women and girls outside of intimate or domestic relationships – or non-intimate partner and family-related (non-IPF) femicide/feminicide. However, less attention is paid to non-IPF femicide/feminicide in research and policy including an agreed definition. 

What is currently known about these cases falls into a range of overlapping structural contexts, circumstances, and relationships, creating challenges for measurement. Non-IPF femicide/feminicide could include ‘stranger’ femicides or the killing of women and girls by acquaintances, employees, employers and clients. There is also the context of misogynist extremism, trafficking and organised crime, so-called ‘honour’ killings and more. Thus, a diverse range of relationships, contexts and circumstances emerge across non-IPF femicide/feminicides that require definition and synthesis.

A scoping review, Definitions of non-intimate partner and family-related femicide/feminicide: A scoping review, conducted by VISION researcher Dr Elizabeth Cook with colleagues Dr Caroline Miles and Merili Pullerits, identifies current definitions of non-IPF femicide/feminicide and the types of evidence that exist in relation to these killings.

The primary research question for the scoping review was: What definitions of non-intimate femicide exist and what types of evidence are available in relation to this type of femicide? The search strategy included electronic database searches (MEDLINE Complete, Social Policy and Practice, APA PsychInfo, Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text; Sociology Source Ultimate; Web of Science), citation-tracking, and hand searching non-governmental organisation websites (e.g., EIGE, UNODC, Femicide Watch). Sources were eligible for inclusion if they reported on women or girls aged 10 or above killed by non-intimate or non-domestic relations. Restrictions were not placed on study context, design or publication language. In total, 126 studies (140 reports) met the inclusion criteria.

The research shows that non-IPF femicide/feminicide encompasses a wide range of types (e.g., sexual femicides, work-related homicides) as well as relationships (e.g., strangers, acquaintances, clients, and employers). However, the team also found that a large proportion of studies did not substantively engage with the gendered contexts and motivations of killings.

Key findings

  • Few reports define non-intimate partner or family-related femicide/feminicide
  • Legal frameworks in Latin America and the Caribbean are key sources of definitions
  • Reports noted specific risks for minoritised women (e.g., Black or migrant groups)
  • Reports identified specific age groups at risk: adolescents and older age victims
  • Definitions operate over three axes: space/location, intimacy, and circumstance

Recommendations

  1. Future research should provide clearly reported and explicit definitions of non-IPF femicide/feminicide including how ‘non-intimacy’ is qualified (e.g., emotional, physical, sexual, or other notions of trust, dependency, or care).
  2. Further research is required to unpack previously described ‘grey areas’ of intimate and non-intimate relationships (e.g., casual sexual partners, adolescent relationships, and dating relationships). This type of research would also provide opportunity to identified potential misclassification of femicide/feminicide.
  3. A significant number of quantitative reports were based on studies of sexual homicide which were focused on forensic characteristics of homicides and perpetrators behaviours and traits, rather than the structural circumstances in which these killings were committed. Future analysis should seek to foreground and interrogate the gendered social structures and relations that surround these femicides/feminicides.
  4. Further research is required that compares intimate and non-IPF-femicide/feminicide cases including victim, perpetrator, and incident characteristics, risk factors, and motives
  5. The availability of data on non-IPF femicide/feminicide is arguably lacking in comparison to data on intimate femicide/feminicide. The publication of various statistical classification frameworks is a promising development but requires application and testing in different jurisdictions.
  6. There is a specific need for intersectional analyses of non-IPF femicide/feminicide to understand how structures and histories of oppression create the conditions in which the killing of women is committed and rationalised (e.g., policing killings of Black women, or sexual femicides of migrant women).

To cite: Elizabeth A. Cook, Caroline Miles, Merili Pullerits, Definitions of non-intimate partner and family-related femicide/feminicide: A scoping review, Social Science & Medicine, 2026, 118917, ISSN 0277-9536, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118917

For further information: Please contact Lizzie at elizabeth.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Employment consequences of intimate partner violence and abuse

Intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) is a global problem. Despite its prevalence, few studies have investigated the employment impact of IPVA, with existing studies spread across multiple disciplines including criminology, economics, and public health. Investigating the employment impacts of IPVA are crucial for understanding the consequences to victim-survivors and wider society.

This systematic review, Employment consequences of Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse, conducted by VISION researcher Dr Niels Blom and Flavia Andrea Lamarre, provides an overview of the main findings on the topic and identified research gaps and opportunities for future research.

Niels and Flavia identified studies via Embase, APA PsycInfo, PubMed, Social Sciences Citation Index, and two related reviews. The studies concerned the association between IPVA and absenteeism, time off from work, unemployment, and/or job loss and were peer-reviewed, English-language, quantitative studies. 

Overall, the 48 identified studies indicated a clear relationship between IPVA and absenteeism/time off work, but evidence was more mixed regarding the association between IPVA and job loss or unemployment. The limitations of current research were discussed, which included that the far majority of studies concerned the United States, investigated only victimization among women, and few used nationally representative data. Male victim-survivors, differences by ethnicity or socioeconomic class, perpetration, and how employment circumstances may help or hinder victim-survivors’ labor market involvement had received limited attention in the literature.

Filling these gaps would provide a stronger evidence-base for effective policies, enabling victim-survivors to retain their employment.

Recommendations

  1. Managers and colleagues should have access to training and assistance in aiding victim-survivors where appropriate, potentially with mandatory training for managers and HR staff.
  2. The large majority of studies stemmed from the United States, which makes it less evident whether the found associations also apply to other societal contexts. Cross-national or cross-state research could help.
  3. For a topic where employment is the central aspect, there has been remarkably little attention to employment circumstances and employers’ role. Further research is needed to examine variation across these aspects to understand what enables victim-survivors to retain employment and long-term productivity. 
  4. A minority of the studies included men. Future work could explore what explains gender differences in the employment impact of IPVA, and when they are more pronounced. Differences by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and age have received limited attention, warranting further research.
  5. There has been a limited amount of work on IPVA perpetrators and their employment. Further work in this area is important.

To cite: Blom, N., & Lamarre, F. A. (2025). Employment Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse: A Systematic Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380251395105

For further information: Please contact Niels at niels.blom@manchester.ac.uk

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VISION hybrid seminar: An overview of systematic reviews on violence 

This event is in the past.

Join us for a hybrid seminar at City St George’s on 10 September exploring two VISION systematic reviews: one on experiences of violence among people in insecure migration status and the other on the effectiveness of UK domestic and sexual violence and abuse support services and interventions.

The interdisciplinary UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) Violence, Health and Society (VISION) consortium brings together evidence on violence prevention from across health, social, crime and other sectors. A key method for producing comprehensive evidence syntheses is the systematic review.

In this seminar, we bring together two very different systematic reviews of evidence on violence:

  • The first presentation, by Alexandria Innes and Hannah Manzur, is global and examines the nature and prevalence of violence among people in different types of insecure migration status.
  • The second presentation, by Annie Bunce and Sophie Carlisle, focuses on the UK and summarises what we do and don’t know about the effectiveness of domestic and sexual violence support services and interventions. 

For further information, please also see the VISION Policy Briefings stemming from the research:

  1. Insecure migration status increases risk of multiple forms of violence
  2. Measuring the effectiveness of UK support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse

Register in person or online here: Ticket Tailor – VISION Hybrid Seminar – 10 Sept 2025

  • In person: Rhind Building, St John Street, London, EC1R 0JD followed by an afternoon tea in the Violence & Society Centre. 
  • Online: A Microsoft Teams link will be emailed the morning of the seminar

For further information, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Insecure migration status increases risk of multiple forms of violence

Insecure migration status is defined as any person who does not have a long term secure immigration status and might fear removal from the country if they fail to comply with their visa restrictions, even if the failure to comply is unknown to them, if forced due to fear for their physical safety, or is coerced.

Research produced by Drs Alexandria Innes and Hannah Manzur of the VISION consortium and PhD student Jana Kriechbaum, Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s University of London, found that people in insecure migration status face or fear violence where violence prevention efforts and violence protection are either not extended to them, or are not made accessible to them.

Findings from their VISION Policy Briefing

The prevalence of violence against people in insecure migration status is a cause for concern. Prevalence of violence is not meaningfully different for people based on type of insecure status, such as those with undocumented status, asylum seekers and refugees, or employer-dependent visas.

Women on spousal visas connect experiences of domestic violence to insecurities associated with their immigration status. The power imbalance embedded in relationships that involve one citizen and one foreigner is exacerbated by attaching the relationship to dependent visa restrictions. Women on spousal visas associated their inability or unwillingness to leave a violent homelife with a fear of immigration removal, therefore prolonging their exposure to violence.

Recommendations

  1. Decouple immigration enforcement from violence prosecution and victim support
  2. Expand protections for survivors of domestic violence
  3. Strengthen protections for victims of work-related exploitation and improve employer regulations
  4. Address state violence in detention and border contexts
  5. Align immigration policies with public health frameworks

To download the VISION Policy Briefing: Insecure Migration

To cite: Innes, Alexandria; Manzur, Hannah; Kriechbaum, Jana (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Insecure Migration. City, University of London. Report. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.29860142.v1

For further information, please contact Andri at Alexandria.Innes@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Measuring the effectiveness of UK support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse

Developing effective responses to domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DVSA) is critical. In the UK there are many support interventions and services, primarily provided by the third sector. Previous systematic reviews of the global evidence have found benefits of such interventions on a range of outcomes.

Despite this, there is limited understanding of which exact outcomes and outcome measures are currently being used both within and across DSVA support services and interventions in the UK specifically. Further, existing systematic reviews only focus on a single type of intervention or service, prohibiting comparisons across service types. Many also have only included evidence published in academic journals, potentially limiting and biasing findings.

For their VISION Policy Briefing, Drs Annie Bunce and Sophie Carlisle, carried out two evidence syntheses:

  1. A scoping review to identify, group and explore outcome measures that have been used to assess the effectiveness of UK-based DSVA support interventions or services.
  2. A systematic review to assess the effectiveness of these interventions or services in terms of the most commonly reported outcomes identified in the scoping review.

Findings include:

  1. Outcome measures assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are varied and inconsistent.
  2. Where consistent measures have been used, meta-analyses demonstrate potential benefits of UK-based advocacy and outreach services, psychological support interventions, and perpetrator programmes.
  3. Studies and evaluations assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are often methodologically flawed.
  4. Conflicting demands and lack of sufficient funding make robust testing and evaluation difficult in the third sector, reflecting a circular challenge.
  5. There was a lack of evidence for certain types of services and interventions (e.g. specialist sexual violence services/Independent Sexual Violence Advisers [ISVAs] and by-and-for services).

Recommendations

Further high-quality research into the effectiveness of DVSA interventions of perpetrator programmes are required, including randomised controlled studies where appropriate and ethical, to improve certainty regarding the effect estimates generated from evidence syntheses. Published protocols, adherence to reporting guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE and SQUIRE 2.0, and considering and accounting for confounding factors where randomisation is not feasible, will strengthen the research.

Developing a core outcome set via co-production with survivors and service users, practitioners and service providers, commissioners, policy makers and researchers will increase consistency in reported outcomes and create the cohesion.

To download the VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK

To cite: Bunce, Annie; Carlisle, Sophie (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK. City, University of London. Report. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.29852984.v1

For further information, please contact Annie at annie.bunce@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Perpetrators of domestic abuse against older adults: A rapid evidence assessment

Despite increased research on issues related to aging and older age, abuse of older adults (defined as 60 or over in this study) is a neglected area of academic study. Most of the available evidence is currently found within the elder abuse field; although there is no agreed definition of elder abuse, most incorporate abuse by perpetrators outside of the family (such as carers, people in positions of trust and in some cases strangers) meaning evidence on intimate partner and family member perpetrators is subsumed within these studies. Most studies on domestic abuse have paid limited attention to older age, and in many cases restrict the focus to intimate partner violence among young adults.

PhD student, Merili Pullerits at the Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s University of London, collaborated with colleagues Hannah Bows (Durham University), who led the study, and Natalie Quinn-Walker (University of Wolverhampton), to examine the existing, published research on the demographic and health characteristics, and the offending behaviours and histories of perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse against adults aged 60 and over. 

Using a systematic methodology, searches were conducted in five databases: MEDLINE Complete, APA PsychInfo, CINAHL Complete, SociINDEX with Full Text, Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text, and Web of Science (Core Collection), resulting in 75 papers being included in the review.

Their rapid review found that much of the available evidence comes from the elder abuse field, with only a fifth of the included studies taking a specific domestic abuse perspective. Because elder abuse studies often group together all abuse types across varied relationship contexts, such studies make  becomes difficult to extract findings on domestic abuse, potentially hiding important differences. Additionally, the review found that non-intimate partners, that is (adult) children or other family members, tend to be the most frequently reported perpetrator group, although this varied according to the design and methodology of the studies. Most perpetrators tend to be male, and, where information is available, poor health, and drug and alcohol problems are often reported.

The research team concluded that more evidence is required on perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse using a broader range of data sources and research methods.

Recommendation

Evidence on those that use domestic violence and abuse on older people should be situated within the conceptual lens of domestic abuse. Policy and practice should urgently review whether existing risk assessment tools and perpetrator programmes are suitable given that a substantial proportion of domestic abuse against older adults is perpetrated by younger sons, daughters or other family members.

To download: Perpetrators of domestic abuse against older adults – a rapid evidence assessment

To cite: Hannah Bows, Merili Pullerits, Natalie Quinn-Walker, Perpetrators of domestic abuse against older adults – a rapid evidence assessment, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Volume 82, 2025, 102056, ISSN 1359-1789, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2025.102056.

For further information, please contact Hannah at hannah.bows@durham.ac.uk

Funding: This study was funded by a Home Office (Domestic Abuse Perpetrators) grant.

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Challenges for evidence syntheses on homicide in a global context

Data and evidence on violence are a few of the many core elements necessary for prevention. They inform decision-making by policy makers, provide corroboration for claims-makers, and exist as a means of empowerment for advocates and activists. However, evidence required for prevention is currently fragmented across different systems of knowledge production, creating challenges in the form of missing data.

Viewed through the sociology of quantification and knowledge production, VISION Co-Investigator Dr Elizabeth Cook, provides methodological and ethical reflections on conducting a global systematic review of sex/gender-disaggregated homicide data. In doing so, she highlights epistemological and ontological differences that risk becoming obscured in global, comparative work on violence. 

The systematic review she draws on in her critique, Conflating the map with the territory: Challenges for evidence syntheses on homicide in a global context, consisted of a four-step search strategy: electronic database searches, hand searches of statistics, ministry, and police websites, citation tracking, and email survey of statistics offices.

Studies were included if they reported prevalence data on homicide which was sex/gender-disaggregated (by victim/offender relationship, sexual aspects, and/or motivation) by both women and men. From 194 WHO-recognised countries, data were available for just under half (n = 84). However, there were pronounced differences between countries and regions regarding the availability of data.

Evidence syntheses are just one way of trying to make sense of this vast body of evidence in a transnational context. Viewed through sociological work on quantification and epistemic communities, Lizzie has provided reflections on a global systematic review to establish the prevalence of sex/gender disaggregated homicide by country, region, and globally. 

Recommendation

To avoid conflating the ‘map with the territory’ as others argue, moving towards critical knowledge synthesis as a way to build in contestation and to decenter assumptions of objectivity in the global systematic review of sex/gender-disaggregated homicide data.

To download: Conflating the map with the territory: Challenges for evidence syntheses on homicide in a global context

To cite: Cook, E. A. (2025). Conflating the map with the territory: Challenges for evidence syntheses on homicide in a global context. International Sociology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809251336694

For further information, please contact Lizzie at elizabeth.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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A Scoping Review: Black and Minoritized Women’s Experiences of Specialist Domestic Violence Services in the UK

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) harms individuals from all backgrounds, yet the experiences and needs of different communities vary significantly. The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that over 1.4 million women and 751,000 men experienced DVA in the year ending March 2023. Black and minoritized women may face heightened vulnerability to DVA due to factors such as socio-economic deprivation, racism, and exposure to specific forms of violence such as so-called honor-based abuse, female genital mutilation or forced marriage.

In addition, minoritized “survivor–victims” of DVA may face intersecting challenges within their socio-political and community context that impede their ability to disclose DVA and may experience social stigma and fears of racism from service providers for example.

This scoping review maps the existing available literature on Black and minoritized women’s experiences with specialist DVA services in the UK to summarize current understanding and identify knowledge gaps.

The research team, comprised of Penelope E. Lowe from University of Roehampton, VISION researchers Sally McManus, Ravi K. Thiara, Estela Capelas Barbosa and Ladan Hashemi, and Pardis Asadi Zeidabadi from City St George’s UoL, and Sumanta Roy of Imkaan and a VISION Advisory Board member, conducted a comprehensive search across multiple databases and gray literature sources. 

Thematic analysis of the findings revealed three main themes: additional service needs, barriers to accessing support, and the pivotal role of “by and for” services. The team concluded that “by and for” services—provided by and for minoritized women—which adopt an intersectional approach are crucial in addressing the unique needs of Black and minoritized “survivor–victims”, particularly in terms of language support, practical assistance, and community-related support. There is a need for more peer-reviewed literature to recognize the role of “by and for” services, using diverse methodologies to support Black and minoritized communities better.

To download the article: Black and Minoritized Women’s Experiences of Specialist Domestic Violence Service in the United Kingdom (UK): A Scoping Review

To cite: Lowe, P. E., McManus, S., Asadi Zeidabadi, P., Thiara, R. K., Roy, S., Capelas Barbosa, E., & Hashemi, L. (2025). Black and Minoritized Women’s Experiences of Specialist Domestic Violence Services in the United Kingdom (UK): A Scoping Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 0(0).  https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380251335038

For further information, please contact Penelope at penelope.lowe@rutgers.edu

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